Abstract
The modern medical practitioner attempts to account for the various aspects of illness by considering them all together and, in doing so, adopts a biopsychosocial approach. As a general medical orientation, psychosomatic medicine finds its main purpose in pursuing such an approach.
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Notes
Another good example of a “holistic starting point” with subsequent splitting of the mind-body unity is Th. Von Uexküll’s notion of Situationskreis, [22] wherein mind and body are regarded as different aspects of one situational circle. But by his application of the biopsychosocial model, Uexküll splits this circle so that each distinct aspect degenerates into a separate entity.
The narrower discipline which is labeled “anthropology” in Great Britain and America is called “ethnology” by the Europeans.
We refer to the lifeworld, the world of everyday social interaction and practical projects, as described by Husserl [5] and Schutz [18].
For extensive discussions of lived time and lived space, refer to Erwin Straus ([19], pp. 3-59) and Boss ([2], pp. 86-100).
Unheimlichkeit may be translated as “creepy” or “sinister”.
Because of limitations of space, we did not address a further dimension of the objective body; the body as biological organism, described by the sciences of biology, chemistry and physiology [19, 20, 26]. This is a crucial dimension of the “objective body” on which the scientifically-trained physician focuses in treating patients. Therefore, its role in medical anthropology is central. In order to develop this aspect of the body, we would have to lay bare the interconnections between the body which the physicians sees and touches (i.e., the objective body described above) and the body about which the physician thinks (i.e., the biological organism as described by physical science). We fully recognize the centrality of the biological organism in any adequate medical anthropology.
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Northoff, G., Schwartz, M.A., Wiggins, O.P. (1992). Psychosomatics, The Lived Body, and Anthropological Medicine: Concerning a Case of Atopic Dermatitis. In: Leder, D. (eds) The Body in Medical Thought and Practice. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7924-7_9
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